Oh, it could just be straightforward, couldn't it? The Nanny and the Count fall in love and the children have a ready-made happy family...

Writer of a number of romance novels, British author Katie Fforde was born on the 27th of September, 1952, as Catherine Rose Gordon-Cumming. Growing up in Wimbledon, London, she spent the majority of her upbringing in the city, something which helped inform much of her later work. With her sister Jane Gordon-Cumming a famous writer as well, her fate as an author was sealed with her passion for literature established early on. She finds herself looking after a teenage girl, a not much younger brother and adopted much younger sister. The teenage daughter is not best pleased she's there! Then comes along the prim and proper granmere followed by the children's estranged mother who both insisit the new nanny is not suitable and the children should be sent to boarding school in England leaving behind their adopted sister. Is home really where the heart is? A wonderfully romantic novel from the No. 1 Sunday Times bestselling author of Wedding Season, A Wedding in Provence and One Enchanted Evening.REVIEWED BY LINDA HILL It’s always a pleasure to read Katie Fforde and A Wedding in Provence is no exception. With an accessible style and the kind of plot readers can both relate to and escape into, this is a story to while away a winter’s afternoon and feel comforted and entertained… Far more of a challenge though is their father - an impossibly good looking French count with whom she is rapidly falling in love . . .

Not very eager to take this route, she jumps at the chance to stay in gay Paree for a little longer when a temporary job offer comes up, but it ends up in Provence, as a nanny, rather than something more glamorous. The story begins in late summer 1963. Alexandra is 20 years old having being orphaned very young. She had had a comfortable life and had nannies and later companions to guide her through the years after family decided to support her from afar. She has just completed a cookery course and made good friends. Not a way-wood way of life but unconventional. Her family from afar have decided that she should go finishing in Switzerland. Reluctantly she goes, stopping in Paris en route. she makes a new friend and helps her out with a dinner party taking the opportunity to stay in Paris a bit longer. She gets to hear about a job and decides that this would be the perfect opportunity to putting her cooking skills to good use and getting to stay in Paris a bit longer. Think Sound of Music, Cold Comfort Farm and the joie de vivre of early Jilly Cooper, but all uniquely and irresistibly Katie Fforde. If you need cheering up and some unashamed escapism, this is perfect.' Phillipa Ashley This bohemian story rolls along energetically, hardly pausing for breath, a cast of colourful characters gathering in the chateau as the story builds. Katie Fforde’s latest novel ‘A Wedding in Provence’ is a refreshingly energetic read and a nod to an era where young ladies, raised by nannies and destined for finishing school, was a very real thing.Catherine Rose Gordon-Cumming was born 27 September 1952 in England, UK, the daughter of Shirley Barbara Laub and Michael Willoughby Gordon-Cumming. Her grandfather was Sir William Gordon-Cumming. Her sister is fellow writer Jane Gordon-Cumming. Katie married Desmond Fforde, cousin of the also writer Jasper Fforde. She has three children: Guy, Francis and Briony and didn't start writing until after the birth of her third child. She has previously worked both as a cleaning lady and in a health food cafe. It’s 1963 and free-spirited heiress Alexandra has 24 hours in Paris before jumping on a train bound for finishing school in Switzerland. She bumps into Donna outside the Sacré Coeur, and there begins a chain of events that leads her to gaining employment from the handsome Le Comte de Belleville. He has ‘dark eyes fringed with long lashes’ and a ‘mouth that curled at the corners’. It comes as no surprise that she finds him ‘almost impossible not to fall in love with’. Published since 1995, her romance novels are set in modern-day England. She is the founder of the "Katie Fforde Bursary" for writers who have yet to secure a publishing contract. Katie was elected the twenty-fifteenth Chairman (2009-2011) of the Romantic Novelists' Association. She is delighted to have been chosen as Chair of the Romantic Novelists' Association and says, "Catherine Jones was a wonderful chair and she's a very tough act to follow. However, I've been a member of the RNA for more years than I can actually remember and will have its very best interests at the core of everything I do." Of course I had watched every TV programme there was about chateaux, but interestingly, the one I created was quite unlike any of the ones I saw. I have to say, I kept forgetting that this was set in the 60’s as it felt like it could have been happening today, until something happened that was clearly set in an earlier time. I also didn’t know that the French celebrate Christmas Eve more than Christmas Day but the way Alex and David introduced the more English traditions felt so fitting in this.